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  Looking for lots of crafts made from recycled materials? You’ve come to the right place. I go beyond soup can pencil holders here. It is all about greening up your crafting and moving toward a more sustainable way of living. This site is full of eco-friendly crafts for children and adults. Making use (re-use really) of otherwise unwanted materials is good for the pocketbook and good for the environment.

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Having a party but don’t want to use disposable cups? At Kid parties at our house, we sometimes let guests write directly on the mug or cup with a Sharpie. Because they can identify their cup throughout the party, this eliminates the need to dirty another cup. Believe it or not, the ink scrubs off without much effort: use a scouring pad.

I wanted to share an idea I had to use number game tiles on a birthday cake. I can’t remember the name of the game that I got these tiles from. (A friend of Fun In The Making reminded me the game’s name is Rummikub.- Thanks Alicia.) Use tiles to put the age of the birthday person. Next time, I might repaint the numbers another color. I got a game second hand and it was missing some of the pieces so I put what I had to use in other ways. More on that in another post.

Dominos might make an attractive addition to your cake if you don’t have any number tiles. And who says you can’t use the tiles, clean them, and then put them back. It doesn’t have to be from a trash bound game.

Reduce waste!

Here is an idea. Why not reuse the plastic bags that your frozen vegetables come in? After eating the vegetables, simply cut one end off the bag with a pair of scissors. Then rinse out the bag and you’re good to go. The bags can also be washed out with soap and water and used again. Eventually, you will recycle the bag.

You will need some way to hold the bag closed. I have these clips (see photo) but paperclips will work too.

Reduce the amount of plastic you use by reusing something you already have. Works well too!

Something as simple as covering a plastic nursery pot with bark can have wonderful results.

Adding a ribbon around the pot is a nice touch.

Nice for a house-warming gift or teacher gift.

Beautiful for a wedding or dinner party.

Add bark in a horizontal pattern or a vertical pattern.

We have a wood burning stove so I’m able to gather bark from around our log pile. Alternatively, you can harvest some from fallen trees. Using a hot glue gun, attach strips of bark. I used a pair of pliers to break the pieces to the appropriate length. Work your way around the pot: adding strips as you go. Reuse plastic pots you have hanging around your garage or find some secondhand. This blog is about wise use of resources so ask around and reuse items as much as possible.

I used 3 inches tall pots with square tops for a windowsill herb garden and I used a 4.5 inches tall round pot for a centerpiece.

A cool and easy way to repair knee holes in jeans is to sew on the back pockets of a pair of older jeans. It’s hard to get my daughter to part with her favorite pair of jeans. Sometimes when summer comes we make them into shorts but if not, here is a solution.

You will need a pair of jeans that you can salvage the back pockets from. I like the ones from smaller jeans. You might have some that your child has worn out/ out grown. I used a seam ripper to remove the pockets then I sewing them over the holes of the jeans that we want to keep. I left the pockets open on the tops but you can sew all the way around if you like. When salvaging old pockets, you may want to cut the pockets off instead so that you have two layers that you sew on.

They are approved by fashion conscious people (like my daughter).

Save the brown paper used as packing material in the boxes you get in the mail. You could recycle it but it would be even better to reuse that paper in other ways.

This is what I’m talking about.

I roll it up and put it away until needed.

Besides an amusement for my cat, it can be reused in so many crafty ways.

One example is as a protective table cloth when doing craft projects.

Here students are painting bread dough ornaments made during one of my workshops.

As a parent, are you tired of finding dishes all about the house? Do your kids claim that they aren’t theirs? Avoid squabbling and teach responsibility by providing unique dinnerware to everyone in your family. A fun thing to do is to go to yard sales or thrift stores allowing each member of your family to pick out a plate, cup or glass, bowl, fork, knife, spoon (anything they will need). That way they will like what they have. Don’t get carried away and get lots of accessories; start with the bare minimum. The key is to use one of a kind items so kids will not mistake another’s for their own. Also, you don’t want the kids reaching into the cabinet for another plate when they can’t find their own. After each use, everyone should wash their own dishes by hand.

I’m trying to teach responsibility and self reliance to my children without a lot of nagging. It’s been two weeks and I’m seeing an improvement.

Set your table with mixed and unmatched plates and cups. Most of the tableware in the above photo came from the thrift store.

You might also try this technique with bath towels. Even if your kids don’t have to wash their own towels, they won’t be allowed to keep grabbing a new one while leaving the old one on the floor somewhere.

On a side note, I threw a dinner party one time and used mixed matched plates because of the large amount of guests. It turned out to be fun; I let the guests pick where they wanted to sit.

Saving scraps of colored paper saves resources and saves money. When doing a craft project involving colored paper, collect the paper scrapes and save them in a box or tray for future use. Whenever you need a piece of colored paper, first look in your scrap colored paper tray (or box) and see if there is one the right size. Only if you can’t find what you need there do you get a new piece of paper.

Here is a simple idea. Have you ever thought about saving that perfectly re-useable paper bag you got at a fast food place? Not always but sometimes that fast food bag is clean. Should you just throw it away after using it for a total of five minutes (sometimes less)? It just seems wrong to waste.

Instead, save it to pack a lunch one day. I prefer reusable lunch boxes but sometimes you can’t pack in a lunch box because of bulk, like when hiking etc..

Always look for ways to reuse.

…and when appropriate, tell them to skip the bag.

An Eco-Shower (in my opinion) is any outdoor shower that is made with mostly salvaged materials and uses solar power to heat the water.

I love my outdoor shower. You can see where horses chewed on the wood and I like the little worm holes in the wood. This eco-shower is perfect for us in Southern Maryland because this area is historically known for its barns/ farms (especially tobacco barns) and the Chesapeake Bay.

Outdoor showers are great for several reasons: they keep your inside shower cleaner- especially good when returning from the beach all sandy… or muddy from a kayak trip. Also using it instead of your inside shower will keep the extra humidity out of your bathroom –especially good for people who have bathrooms where mold is a problem. In addition, it will reduce your electricity usage because you don’t have to use your water heater to heat your shower water. Best of all, it’s nice to shower outdoors!

A driftwood wreath fits in nicely. Don’t you think?

How to:

Good friends of mine were renovating the inside of their antique Maryland barn. That is how I was lucky enough to get my hands on some barn stall walls. I recruited my husband to help me build a frame out of treated four by fours. I used the pieces of the stall walls for the walls of the shower. There was some reconstructing (rearranging) involved.

Paint on a coat of water sealer to help preserve the wood.

To add the lettering on the side, I printed out a font that I liked in a large font size. I cut out the letters, traced the letters on the wood, and then pained the letters with acrylic paint.

Set up a garden hose extending to your shower. The longer the hose is the better (within reason). I connected two long hoses and coiled them neatly in a sunny location. The sun will heat the water while you are getting hot and sweaty mowing your lawn or working in your garden.

I located the shower far enough away from the house to avoid water problems and the land slopes away from the shower into the woods. You might want to install a drywell, which is basically just a hole filled with rocks. We currently stand on a slab of granite while showering but someday I think I’ll add a gravel walkway to the shower and a gravel floor in the shower.

Admittedly, we only use the shower seasonally. I don’t like a cold shower. But in the summer it’s fantastic.

Don’t forget to add hooks to hang up cloths or towels. I used cleats (found at any hardware store) because they gave it a boat house feel. Even better would be to find some old cleats and reuse them in this project.

For privacy, I ripped a few barn boards into strips and filled some of the gaps between the boards.

Here is some home-made soap that I made. It is on a rock soap dish.

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• Got Questions?

  Are you having any trouble understanding some of the instructions? Feel free to send me a quick e-mail at HesterJane@FunInTheMaking.net. I’ll do my best to answer your questions. Do you have any suggestions regarding a specific post? Maybe you have a better way and would like to share it with the other creative people visiting this site? -Hester Jane